Snowden talks about what he believed were the most important documents he disclosed

Jul 9, 2013 07:30 GMT  ·  By
Snowden believes the biggest revelation is that the NSA doesn't limit its surveillance in any way
   Snowden believes the biggest revelation is that the NSA doesn't limit its surveillance in any way

In the second part of his interview with The Guardian, which was only now published, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden talked about what he believed were the major disclosures made possible by his leaks.

First and foremost, he believed that the simple fact that the NSA doesn't limit itself to foreign surveillance and that it constantly engages in mass surveillance of Americans would be the biggest revelation.

While there have been plenty of rumors and speculation about the NSA's mass surveillance apparatus, he was right in predicting that actually providing proof of the scale of the NSA's operations would be the biggest shock to most people.

Crucial in that revelation, Snowden believed, was the Verizon leak which made it clear that the NSA, through corporate partners, was amassing the phone records of all Americans all the time, without discrimination.

Information on the Boundless Informant program, he believed, would also prove damaging to the NSA's abuses. Boundless Informant provided NSA agents with data on what surveillance information was available and through which means or programs it was gathered.

This is the exact type of information that the NSA told Congress it did not have and wasn't capable of providing, i.e. how many Americans it was spying on.

Snowden also labeled the PRISM leak as very important. PRISM, Snowden said, gave the US government direct access to the backend systems of Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and others. This, he added, was so that the companies would not be held liable for the data the government took.

The scope of the program has been denied by both the US government and the companies involved. Google vehemently denied that the government had any sort of direct access to its servers.

Snowden is said to have thousands of documents from the NSA, but only made a handful available to the press. But his leaks were enough to provide information on the scale of NSA's spying and, hopefully, pressure the US government to change.

In the interview, Snowden also predicted the charges that the US would bring against him, like espionage or aiding the enemy.